Hi Francesco,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 5: I have an interest that is not only enjoyable but also aligns with my personal values .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, universalism, and security.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.
You said your top three talents were spiritual, social, and analytic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to educating people on how to be happy .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Plan my routine .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Finding structure in an unstructured world and wicked learning environment .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said unstructured hours of tasks in my routine .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I have a thought about improving my life, I will write it down and plan how to implement it in my routine .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Running .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Accepting when receiving critical feedback, and Accepting when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being uncertainty .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Something else .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel alive .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| I want to make an impact in the world |
| You need to have an obsessive interest. I liked the energy exercise too |
| values are beliefs |
| Intrapersonal talent is about self-regulation and introspection. Effort counts twice |
| Intrinsic motivation actually stems from extrinsic from introjection to finally making it intrinsic |
| The importance of moving from action to plan and the Rubicon |
| I need to make my goals specific, especially career wise and discovery project wise, I need to get started on them and receive feedback. I do too much work alone and need more deliberate practice followed by feedback! |
| Feedback is information. Praise requires training too |
| I fully understood the process model from environmental cues and thoughts to responses |
| The validity of plagiarising personality and the importance of seeking mentors |
| I learnt about self-transcendence better and how to not burn out by giving too much. I wooped my five minute favor |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Frederique Wollaert |
| I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to you. Your presence has made an impact on my time during Grit Lab. You are very kind to everyone and you are great at creating a welcoming atmosphere. I love your passion for helping others, running, and Italian food. I value all the topics we discussed during Grit Lab and all the moments we have shared as classmates. Thank you for being such a genuine and thoughtful classmate.
Your discovery project presentation about communicating hard emotions through filmmaking and media was awesome. Everyone goes through hard emotions and sad periods, and I thought it was cool that you were so open about that during your presentation. I think this is a good way to deal with those emotions and connect with them. Another part of your sampling project that I appreciated was your spontaneous trip to Princeton for an energy project and your passion for TA’ing a class, showing your genuine interest in helping everyone.
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| Kyuho Lee |
| It’s been amazing to get to know you throughout this semester! One thing I’ve always noticed from all of our interactions is that you bring kindness into everything. Your passion for people and learning is so contagious and has been so great to watch over the course of this semester. You are so involved in so many things on campus and I respect your level of commitment to everything that you do, as well as your openness to new ideas, which we saw in your sampling project. Your Discovery Project also showcased your passion for filmmaking in such an incredible way, and I’m excited to see where you take it! Your recommendation for Italian restaurants was also on point - I went to Gran Caffe L’acquila the other day and it was absolutely fantastic. I’m looking forward to seeing how you continue to grow and make your mark in the world. Keep exploring, keep creating, and keep inspiring! |
| Hillary Lim |
| I am glad to have gotten to know you better through Grit Lab. Your motivation to move to the US for college, to be a TA, to be part of Penn Impact Investing have certainly made me reflect on my intentions. I also really respect your determination and passion to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, especially running in the cold. Your maturity of thought and approach to social relationships have also probed me to take on a new perspective of life and friendships. Lastly, thank you for your Italian restaurant recommendations!
Your sampling project of different career paths was amazing and I am glad you got to explore all those industries. It was a good reminder for everyone that there are a lot more possibilities out there than we perceive to be available. I am also glad you got to discover and harness your creativity through filmmaking. I am sure you will be able to uncover more of yourself past this semester and I am looking forward to it.
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We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.